


Beneath the Moonless Stars

by theaberrantwritergirl



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, Blood, Cemetery, Childhood Memories, Children, Dark, Eventual Smut, F/M, First Kiss, Gothic, Human Trafficking, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Dub Con Snoke/Ben, Minor Snoke/Ben, Parenthood, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Assault, Past Violence, Prostitution, Romance, Sexual Abuse, Speculative fiction, Stalking, Staring, Stars, Torture, Touching, Violence, Waterboarding, darkficlite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:34:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27275767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theaberrantwritergirl/pseuds/theaberrantwritergirl
Summary: Moonless stars bleed across the sky. They bled on that night eight years ago, too, and have each moonless night since then.At seventeen, Rey’s life was shattered by a creature in a mask. She survives with her son as a doctor in the remnants of the city of Coruscant, a world designed to own and break women. For eight years, her stars have been moonless.That changes when she meets Ben, a man that, like her, only visits the cemetery on moonless nights. He is poetic, brooding,different,and she feels a strange pull toward him.But she doesn’t know the secrets he keeps—secrets darker than any moonless night she’s ever known before…
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 40
Kudos: 59





	1. watching, with eternal lids apart

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning: This story contains adult, dark themes such as references to past rape/assault, past violence, alcohol use, explicit language, mentions of blood (though not graphic), minor Snoke/Ben (though not graphic, more suggestive), stalking, and torture (waterboarding). Some content may be emotionally distressing. The tags are subject to change as additional chapters are posted. Reader discretion is strongly advised.**
> 
> To get the feel of this fic, please check out the playlist on Youtube: [Beneath the Moonless Stars Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk6MxhK_jyFJ3hOUWuXB5JgTWPywr2xL)

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—  
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night  
And **watching, with eternal lids apart,**

—["Bright Star" by John Keats](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44468/bright-star-would-i-were-stedfast-as-thou-art)

* * *

Moonless stars bleed across the sky. They bled on that night eight years ago, too, and have each moonless night since then. The chaos, the violence as they burned into existence. All to be alone. With no moon to guide them, how do they still shine? It’s a question Rey has never been able to answer.

Her bodyguard, Finn, touches her shoulder. Right. It’s not safe to stop here. It hasn’t been in a long time. Behind them, Coruscant’s Facility for Women’s Rehabilitation stands on the eastside of the neighborhood of Jakku. _Rehabilitation_. An insult to what it actually is. 

Slowly, Finn drives them through the streets. A few girls are lined up against peeling buildings, on sidewalks in the market district, waiting for the night’s crop. Before its end, they will have taken over ten to fifteen men. She knows the stories, their lives, from the women that pass through the facility. All Coruscant’s industries thrive off the holes between their legs. 

“Can we stop by the cemetery tonight?”

Finn’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “You know that’s not a good idea.”

He’s right. A month ago, one of the other women’s counselors, Paige, was murdered. Throat slit, found in an alleyway—a trademark of the Knights of Ren, the organization that runs the Industry. Likely an initiation ritual, but the media blamed it on the lower-class. They usually they don’t kill government workers.

Visiting the cemetery helps clear her mind after she spends hours counseling women at the facility. Helps her remember the grave she clawed out of.

“I won’t stay long,” she says. “Ten minutes or so.”

Despite his hesitation, the SUV pulls up to the wrought-iron gates moments later, and Rey pauses on the door handle, grabbing a bunch of flowers from the backseat. White chrysanthemums and purple heather, already wilting. Her mother used to display them in a flower-etched glass vase on their small kitchen table. 

With Finn watching from a distance, Rey walks, steps light, the vintage lamps illuminating the brown grass in yellow. Eight years ago, there was no light here. Only the stars, those bleeding stars as they burned across her vision. _The push, tearing and stinging. Steel against her throat. That voice behind the mask, gloved hand against her mouth, whispering, “I’m sorry.”_

_Cire Palana_

_Autumn 9th, The Year of Snoke 7_

Rey sticks the flowers in the holder. No birthdate. Only the day they cut her throat. 

From the entrance on the other side, a tall shadow glides. Finn moves closer, body immediately rigid, but Rey puts a hand up. The shadow stops before a grave—the usual one. It’s him. The man who also comes on moonless nights. 

They’ve never spoken, but new moon after new moon, Rey has studied him from afar. The lamps illuminate his face in halflight. Hair like the blackest night, blacker than nights without stars, under clouds. Wisps fall into his face carelessly, head down. No flowers—he never brings them. With his hands in his pockets, he closes his eyes and bows his head as he always does.

Rey’s feet move, walk toward him. He won’t hurt her. She’s seen him before; he’s not _one of them._ Finn follows rigidly, soldierly. Closer she draws until the dim light clearly illuminates his face. His eyes snap to hers. A long face and a large, sloped nose, jaw hard. Deep brown with veins of yellow and gold—they shine. Perhaps they could in the dark, too.

She holds out a few stalks of chrysanthemums and heather, hands shaking. He doesn’t move. She clears her throat. “I noticed you never have flowers, so I thought…” Her hand lowers. “I don’t know what I thought, it was stupid. Excuse me.”

Just as she begins to turn away, he grasps them. “Thank you,” he murmurs gruffly. That deep voice… like in a dream, a nightmare. Rey searches his face—perhaps he’s one of her patients—but finds nothing recognizable. He’s strange looking. Not remarkable in the usual way like a magazine model but _different._ A face she would remember no matter how drugged or beaten or incoherent she was. He sets the flowers in the rusted holder.

_Han Solo_

_Autumn 14th, The Year of Snoke 10._

The year _it_ happened, when she was seventeen. She pulls her scarf tighter around her neck. 

“I’ve noticed you, too,” he replies, abruptly, as she’s turning away again. “Always with the same flowers on the same nights every new moon. Why?”

She blinks. “I… my mother.” A half-truth, but he won’t know that. “It’s a silly little ritual, but it helps me feel closer to her. What about you?”

“Your accent—where did you pick that up? You don’t hear it too often.”

“Oh, I, umm, I came to Coruscant when I was a girl.” Except Rey is stuck with the accent that immediately differentiates her from everyone else. However, people usually comment more on her scars than her accent—if she takes off her scarf. Many foreigners work in the industry nowadays. Brings in more profit. “Before the End, we lived in a commune. After, mum was forced into the Industry. She died, and her Owner took me in. Same old sob story.”

He considers this silently before saying, “Easy for them, right?” He nods toward Han’s grave and begins walking away. “Death is a moment. For us, it’s a lifetime. Planning your days around when you remember them the most. Days they won’t get to see.”

“You a poet?” she calls after him with a smile.

He doesn’t return it, tilting his head in a wordless goodbye. “My mother.”

* * *

His words spin in her mind, follow her home, dance in the ceiling cracks above as she lies awake in bed. The way his full lips formed them. _Days they won’t get to see._

Rey wakes to her son’s sleeping face, his dirty-brown hair brushing into his cheeks carelessly. _Carelessly._ She needs to take him to get it cut. Or maybe Leia will have to. 

“Good morning, my not-so-little-anymore moon,” Rey whispers into his hair when he stirs, gangly limbs stretching. 

The smell of eggs and sausage seeps into the room. She gets him dressed in his private school uniform, looping the red tie tightly and smoothing the white lotus symbol with her thumb. He grins. A new gap in his teeth. 

“Did you lose _another_ tooth?”

Luan nods. “Leia said if I put it under my pillow, a fairy would bring me credits!” He holds out his palm with the tooth in the center, face falling. “But I didn’t find any credits this morning.”

Rey swallows. “Why don’t you try again tonight, love? Maybe the fairy was busy like mummy.” She has been working later recently while Leia handles everything else, including Luan’s care. At seven years old, he has the important things Rey never had—a stable home in a good middle-class area of Coruscant, free of the Industry. An education. _Innocence._ When she was his age, her mother worked the streets under Plutt. Rey watched her suck off a guy dressed in a police uniform once, from behind slits of light through her fingers. Plutt took ninety percent of the money. Two-hundred credits. Luan will never see that. Never. They will have to slit her throat again, tear the arteries out of her neck, and dig a deeper hole. 

When they come downstairs, Leia gives her a stern look, drinking coffee at the kitchen table. “I thought you'd already left.”

Their housekeeper, Kaydel, sets three bowls of sausage and eggs onto the table. “Sorry, Rey, I didn’t know you’d be here for breakfast.”

Rey tells her it’s fine, that she can eat at work, and says to Leia, “I wanted to help one day. I emailed my supervisor last night about going in later.”

Rey expects a lecture, but Leia takes another sip, the glare lecture enough. _You’re not taking this seriously! Do you know how privileged you are for this position? We can’t risk it. You worked too hard to get here._

 _Leia_ had worked too hard—not Rey. She is someone’s scraps, meant to die in the shallow grave they threw her in. _Leia_ had found her at the rehabilitation center, saved her from a life in the Industry, and offered her an option to escape to Chandrila. Rey declined. She wanted to make them pay; she _had_ _to_ make them pay for how they beat and killed women, how they stole the light from children’s eyes. Leia also ensured Rey took precautions to prevent Luan—but he came, anyway. That was the way it was. Her little moon on a moonless night. 

“How about I drop you off at school, too, Lu?” Rey ruffles his hair. “On my way to work? Would you like that?”

Luan laughs. “I can show you my classroom! Could you come in, too? Pretty please? I want you to see my drawings! I have so many and—” 

Leia’s eyes flash to hers in concern.

* * *

Rey asks Finn to drive by the cemetery once a week, despite the moon shining brightly and eclipsing the stars, watching for him. He doesn’t come. A void fills where he stood, no shadows on the wilting grass. She doesn’t even know his name. 

Night after night she returns, making up excuses. Ends up at the pub a few times, gin and tonics, then goes home and drinks a bottle of wine. Luan greets her each morning, begs her to come home earlier. But that man—with his dark, wild eyes—doesn’t leave. She doesn’t understand why. His jaw is too hard, hair too dark, eyes too heavy. 

She goes to work at the center, convincing two to leave in a week. Poe waits for them at the border facility for processing. Eight years ago, with her throat stitched up and the space between her legs swollen and bleeding, she vowed to never let anything like that happen to a woman again. 

“Severe PTSD in that one,” Rey says, gesturing discreetly with her head to a woman with long, red hair—Yara—a worker that had been in the system for ten years and birthed seven children, all taken by her owner. “She’ll need to be monitored for suicide risk.” When Poe brushes off her warning, she continues, “You have to have her watched. I know what it’s like.” _The leather, the pushing, the sting, tears slipping down her cheeks._

“We don’t have enough volunteers on the other side for a 24/7 suicide watch. You know that,” Poe says, matching her cold tone. The Resistance—all business. “Do your job and I’ll do mine.”

From behind the chain-link divider, Yara flashes her a knowing, longing look, her eyelashes fluttering with tears. Rey has mentored her for years—in and out of the facility, in out and out of selling herself, and just now made it here. Just now was it safe enough for Rey to try to convince her to leave without the fear that she would run to her Owner. That effort to keep her alive… all to be taken because someone like Poe wouldn’t listen. Still, although she hates to admit it, he’s right. It’s not like there are lines of volunteers for the Resistance. It earned Paige a cut throat, broken and bloodless in an alley. It might be the same for them all. 

Rose, her sister, seemed to take the news well at first, but Rey finds her crying faintly in the bathroom sometimes. She’s been the most careful at the rehabilitation center since it happened. Hasn’t recruited in months. Rey has tried to counsel her and invite her over for dinner, but she refuses—says it’s not safe. But where is safe? They are in Coruscant; the government watches all. They work for the Resistance—what _is_ safety? 

Rey dreams about the man sometimes. How he would stand over her, hand in his, leaning down to press his lips against hers. Silly, perhaps, as Luan lies against her chest in an apartment with peeling wallpaper. What does she have to offer him? A child that can’t sleep without her? Working as a doctor for a government that uses her as their humanitarian get-out-of-jail card? 

The thoughts vanish when she sees him again. On another moonless night. 

She approaches with sure steps, offering a loose bunch of flowers. “Please,” she says, extending it. 

The word affects him strangely—he winces, continues to stare. Eventually, he takes it from her hands and places it in the holder, pushing aside the dead flowers from the month prior. 

“Aren’t you brave?” he asks sarcastically. “In this city, talking to the wrong people could get you killed.”

“I’m Rey.” She doesn’t blink, stutter, or think of using a false name. “Who are you?”

He looks around before stopping on her eyes. “Ben.” Unlike her, he draws it out, hesitates. 

Ben—simple, hopeful. She tries it once on her lips. “Nice to meet you,” she replies and means it. The autumn chill creeps into her jacket, but she doesn’t feel it. Having his name after months of watching him, feeling it on her lips, makes warmth fill her cheeks.

 _Han Solo._ The name stares at them. “Who did you lose?” she asks with her chin raised.

Ben chuckles, lights a cigarette, cupping his hands. “No loss.” Taking a drag, he shrugs and gestures toward the grave. “Sperm donor.”

“I never knew my father,” Rey says softly. “Must have been nice to know that at least.”

“He would have disappointed you.”

“If you hated him so much, why visit?”

Ben takes another drag, chuckling again. “I didn’t hate him.”

The bite in his words suggests otherwise, but Rey doesn’t question it. She understands the anger, especially with those that should love them unconditionally. Her mother tried to tell her about how much her father had loved her, but the proof was in her mother fleeing to Coruscant for a _better_ life. It didn’t matter if her mother didn’t want to speak the word; Rey knew how she was made. In their home country just before she was born, the Knights of Ren had taken over, their first of many countries. They kept rape illegal but allowed men to take five, ten, thirty wives forcefully, as long as they could pay for them. Rey and her mother escaped when she was six-years-old. They lived in a community of ex-Stewjonians, and it was peaceful. Poor, hungry, laundry hardly ever washed—but peaceful. Unfortunately, the support for the Knights of Ren had grown too great, and they overthrew the previous administration. A country that made it legal, good and mandatory even, for Owners to take most of their women’s earnings from the industry. Rey knew her mother had wanted to exit north together, to Chandrila, not stay here—the scraps of what used to be the real Coruscant. It rose and fell. Left, right, whatever. It hadn’t made a difference during the End. 

“Cold out here, isn’t it?” Rey asks, snuggling into her faux fur coat. 

“We’re talking about the weather now?”

“You _did_ mention my accent when we first spoke. I think a talk of the weather is due in order to complete our mundane topic pile.”

That coaxes a slight smile out of him—a real one. “Can’t know someone without that.”

Rey looks toward the pub, the women standing outside in their mini dresses and skirts, the glow of the green neon _welcome sign._ “Care for a drink to talk about it some more?” 

He finishes off his cigarette with another smile. But this one fades quickly. “Can’t.”

“Busy?” Her chest throbs. “Perhaps another night? Or tomorrow? Here? I can bring the drinks.”

“Little morbid? And wouldn’t that upset tradition?”

“I, maybe. Truthfully, I’m a… a doctor at the women’s facility.” The words curl her tongue, and she doesn’t understand why convincing him means so much. She shouldn’t be admitting her job to a stranger. “You know, for rehabilitation. I don’t, well, I don’t get out much. And most men in this godforsaken city pay to get themselves off.”

“You don’t have an Owner?”

“Doctors can’t.” _Unless they’re kidnapped and sold._ “Government-paid, upper-class.”

He smashes his cigarette into the dirt. “Tomorrow, then.” Thanking her for the flowers, he vanishes through the gates. _Tomorrow._ Her first date. Is it a date? What will she wear? Rey smiles—until she looks up. _The tearing, the stinging, the push. Gasps of leather._ The stars, moonless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Thoughts, praise, constructive criticism? Leave a comment below or contact/follow me on Tumblr: [theaberrantwritergirl](https://theaberrantwritergirl.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Special thank you to my first readers, [AuroraReylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraReylo/works), [benduo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/benduo/pseuds/benduo), and [Love_andbalance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_andbalance/pseuds/Love_andbalance). They helped a lot with brainstorming and final read-throughs.


	2. stars, I have seen them fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She tangles her fingers in his hair and swims in the stars—Andromeda and Perseus—drifting in the dark and little pools of light. Her head spins. She searches his tongue, pressing hers into his, uncoordinated. That night stole everything but this. It couldn’t make her feel the moles on his cheeks, the valleys, let her breathe it in. Her first kiss._   
> 

**Stars, I have seen them fall** ,  
But when they drop and die  
No star is lost at all  
From all the star-sown sky.  
The toil of all that be  
Helps not the primal fault;  
It rains into the sea,  
And still the sea is salt.

—["Stars, I have seen them fall" by A. E. Housman](https://interestingliterature.com/2018/12/stars-i-have-seen-them-fall-a-poem-by-a-e-housman/)

* * *

Before her mother died, the stars were just stars. They didn’t bleed; they weren’t moonless. They shined and made up the constellations her mother pointed out. _This one is Aquarius and this one is Andromeda. See, Rey? The dark has light, too. Nothing to be afraid of. Shh, I know, I know, it’s scary. But I’m here. I’m always here. You’re my big ray of light, aren’t you? Not afraid of anything._

The Knights of Ren. Rey remembers when she and her mother first saw them on TV. The masks they wore. “Knights, ha,” her mother had sneered hoarsely. “Cowards. They helped that bastard take down this whole bloody nation and refuse to show their faces.” Rey winced, eyes wide and glued to the screen, tears pooling. Her mother took her into her arms, apologized, and told her it would be alright. They would survive like they had in Stewjon before escaping. _I’m here. I’m always here._ But she couldn’t keep those masks from her dreams. Masks like skulls and death—dripping in black with swords of crimson blood. 

But they were nothing next to _him._ Their leader, Kylo Ren. No one knew where he was from or what he wanted. Shortly after her mother’s death, when she was fourteen, he stood on the TV as Supreme Leader Snoke gave a speech. Body rigid, in black to match his Knights. However, his mask wasn’t _like_ a skull; it was a skull. He wasn’t _like_ death; he _was_ death. His blood sword was the largest and most erratic when ignited. _Enforcer,_ Snoke’s enforcer—that’s what they called him. Head of the police, the mission to eradicate poverty. Making prostitution legal would do that, they said. Abortion would stay legal, acceptable until birth. If lower-class women earned more money, they could escape poverty. Prostitution was good, a woman’s choice. But Rey watched them die in alleys and apartments, on sidewalks and in fields. The Knights of Ren did nothing, and rumors that they caused some of the deaths spread. Silent eradication. When the public rioted, the Supreme Leader raised the minimum wage for workers. And when they rioted more, he built rehabilitation centers. Girls still went missing and died, bloodless, but the news stopped reporting it. They didn’t bury the bodies—they burned them. One after the other after the other. Blood and blood and more blood. And in her dreams, his mask of death rose from the piles of bodies. _That_ mechanical, deep voice.

Kylo Ren. 

* * *

Ben. He isn’t there when Rey walks through the gates of the cemetery with a blanket and cool box full of drinks. Coruscant coolers, Corellian whiskey, and ciders and nectars from all over the world. She spent almost an hour at the liquor shop after work digging through crates and turning over bottles to find _something_ that spoke to her. Nothing did, so she grabbed the ones she thought he might like. 

Rey lays the blanket down in an unlit corner, pops open a cider. Minutes pass. Finn urges her to leave—it’s not safe. But she waits. Thirty. Forty. Until his loosely-laced combat boots hit the dirt. 

He sits down on the blanket, lighting a cigarette. “You really went all out,” he says, breathing out smoke and brushing back his long hair. 

She opens the cooler, offers it to him. Stammering. Fidgeting with her scarf. 

He takes out the Corellian whiskey and pours them each a drink and toasts, touching his plastic cup to hers. “No moon again tonight.”

“Not breaking tradition then, right?” she replies with a sip from her cup. The liquid burns, a knife tearing her throat. “It takes a few days. I like having a range, you know, right. Sometimes it’s cloudy or rainy, and I have a few days.”

“You really take this seriously.” He chuckles, puffs on his cigarette. 

“So do you… or you have for the past few months.”

“You’ve been watching me.”

Heat rises to her cheeks. “Not like that… it’s just, no one comes here when I do. I wasn’t expecting you. I wasn’t expecting anyone. There aren’t any funerals anymore, right, the bodies are burned, so—” 

“You can admit it.” He breathes, brown eyes locking on hers. “I’ve noticed you, too.”

From his lips, it’s comforting, validating, not ill-intentioned. A fact. Her posture relaxes. “I…” She moves closer, places her head on his shoulder, snuggling into the fabric of his jacket. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. They watch the sky as clouds drift in and out. “So few people came to her funeral,” Rey begins. “It was mostly those that worked with her under Plutt, our landlord. He became our Owner after the Fall. The women in the house... they raised enough money to pay to bury her in the small churchyard here… But they didn’t remember her—the real her. The Fall happened so quickly. They knew the refugee from Stewjon, that’s it. The one they found crying at night… when the coverage of the overthrow of Coruscant was broadcasted late. But they didn’t remember _her._ She loved the stars, the constellations. We would watch them every other night, just her and I, on the balcony. She would, oh god, she made the best fried chicken cutlets with extra breading. Panko crumbs—do you know those? It was… _her._ She smelled like…” Rose water, earthy and sweet. Rey can’t describe it aloud, make her lips move.

Ben offers her a cigarette, but she declines, pointing to her drink. “Never could stand those,” she says. “Reminds me of Plutt and his pipe. God, he would smoke that damn thing.” Rey remembers that smell the most, floating from his ratty recliner as he stretched out every night while watching the news. Sweet but musty. Stained the walls. _Breaking news._ Puff. _Kylo Ren. Supreme Leader Snoke._ Puff, blow. _Get me a drink, girl. Go on. Whiskey, on the rocks._

Ben sucks the last bit of his cigarette and lights another. “My dad hated them, too. Drank a fuck ton, but always gave me a lecture about quitting when I’d see him.” Breathe, puff. “You know this shit used to be illegal.” He taps his glass. “Dad smuggled in three-hundred cases of it from Corellia into Chandrila. Said it was one of his best hauls ever.”

“You’re from Chandrila?” Chandrila, the last free country standing, bordering north of Coruscant and The Country of Ren, where Rey helps recruit the girls to. 

“Born but not raised, family traveled a lot, but yeah. I guess so.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Work, same as you. We all have to earn our way. The world doesn’t care.”

“Do you miss it?”

He pauses, eyes shining. “Every fucking day.”

Rey smiles, snuggling closer into him. His smell—cigarettes and _house._ But what does _house_ smell like? It makes her smile wider. The linens in the house in Stewjon? Earthy roses like her mother’s skin? Rey breathes in but can’t identify it. Ben. Like she’s known it—or him—longer than the stars have bled or the constellations have been named. 

She asks him the usual small talk questions. _What do you do?_ “Airplane pilot.” His voice lowers to a whisper. “But really, I, uh, smuggle goods into Coruscant. Bring in whatever shipments and transmit propaganda messages from Chandrila.” _Where do you live?_ “The next street up from the bar. Little apartment above a flower shop.”

“And yet you never have flowers,” Rey says.

“Dad didn’t like them. Mom did, but he didn’t. Said they stunk the place up.” 

The conversation moves to the stars, the constellations. He points and says, “Andromeda, the chained lady. Your mom tell you about that one?”

“Mhm,” Rey mumbles. “Greek mythology. The lady chained to a rock by the gods.”

“And saved by Persus.”

“My mother loved the mythology. I used to ask her if Persus was her prince, a marriage predicted in the stars. Silly.”

“They never tell you the true story when you’re a kid.” Ben pours more whiskey into their cups. “The gods chained her to a rock, and she waited for Cetus to rape her.”

Rey swallows, drains the last of her whiskey. _Leather. Searing. Rey, Rey, Rey… shhh._ Ben fills her cup again; she swings it back. _My little ray of light._ “But Persus saved her,” she says. “He always does in every version, right, before it can happen?”

“Yeah.” Ben moves closer, nuzzling his nose into her hair. Inhales. “He does. Always.”

They talk of the others—Aquarius and Pisces. Rey listens to the stories like she did as a child when her mother told them. Aquarius is Ganymede, the boy who Zeus kidnapped. He would later becomes the cup bearer for the gods. The constellation, Crater, is his cup. A life of servitude his sole purpose. As for Pisces, variations of the story exist depending on the mythology’s origin—the Babylonian version being the most accepted. A pair of fish on a cord. Venus and Cupid tied themselves together and transformed into fish to escape Typhon, a monster with a hundred dragon heads. But the more they speak, the more a strange feeling grows. It starts in her gut and creeps up, down, and throbs. How small they are under the sky. She never felt like that when her mother was alive, not until she died and the dreams came. 

“The stars help me remember her, but they make me feel...” Rey squeezes her eyes shut. “Every year since she died. They have always made me feel… like I’m the only person in the whole fucking galaxy. Looking at the stars without her, I’ve never felt so alone.”

His voice, a whisper, “You’re not alone. In this whole fucked up world. You’re not alone.” His lips. They trail her hair in the darkness, find hers. Tongue gliding, breath in her face. _Rey, Rey…_ Cigarettes and leafy smoke. House, home. 

The words, when they come, are breathless. “Neither are you,” she whispers against his mouth. His eyes shine. She deepens the kiss, lets him pull her down to the blanket, hands trailing to her neck. Her scarf. Slowly, he unravels it, sucking her collarbone. Deeper. She tangles her fingers in his hair and swims in the stars—Andromeda and Perseus—drifting in the dark and little pools of light. Her head spins. She searches his tongue, pressing hers into his, uncoordinated. That night stole everything but this. It couldn’t make her feel the moles on his cheeks, the valleys, let her breathe it in. Her first kiss. 

His warmth disappears. “I… I have to go,” he says, eyebrows furrowing, lips gone and far. He doesn’t look at her—or won’t. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” He stands up and walks away before the cold crawls into her skin. Streetlight swallows his face. As if he’s running from the stars themselves.

When Rey never could. 

* * *

Rey sits in the cold, doesn’t move. She stares up at the stars until her neck aches and Finn touches her shoulder. But she doesn’t go home. No tears. She walks to the bar and drinks until the lights spin and she can’t hold her head up long enough to look at the sky. 

Until she was seventeen, the bar next to the cemetery was home. The men would buy her drinks, treat her like she was older with her pink miniskirt and tank top. A place for Rey to escape the streets and Plutt, who made her do everything short of selling her body. Said she wasn’t pretty enough, too scrawny and sinewy, no curves. Good for nothing but cleaning, collecting discarded items, and fixing things. No man would ever want her. But Rey knew the true reason—he wanted to break her down and keep her until she turned eighteen, when prostitution was legal. He would have gotten the highest bid for her virginity. But they took that, too. 

Scrawny arms. Unwashed skin. “Jesus, Luan, what time is it? Have you not bathed again?”

“He wouldn’t until you came home last night,” Leia says in the doorway as Rey rubs her temples. “I tried. You got home late, and he fell asleep.”

The old, red vinyl seats. The jukebox clambering in the corner. The drained wine bottle on the nightstand by her bed. “I’m sorry. I stopped by the cemetery, then the bar. Finn was with me.”

“You know what happened to Paige.”

“I know, but—”

“I can’t lose you, too. Luan especially can’t.”

Rey jumps out of bed, Luan’s arms clinging to her waist. His father, does he take after him? She can’t look down, at his sandy brown hair and long face. Those little, brown eyes. No one she knew in her family had brown eyes. Rey reaches for a few acetaminophen tablets by the bed. “Really, stop the dramatics—you both. I’m not going anywhere.” She hasn’t had these thoughts about Luan in a while, but they break through sometimes, making her want to vomit. _He’s your son. They can’t take that away from you._

“Shower, now, and let your mother be,” Leia tells Luan. He groans but obeys, disappearing into the bathroom. Leia picks up the empty wine bottle, rotates it in her hands. “I should have never had you take on this much.”

“You couldn’t do it forever. Someone had to.”

“Yes, but you need to be here for him.” She takes a shaky breath. “Spend time with him while you can. Don’t make the same mistakes I did.”

Eight years ago, around the time of _that_ night, Leia's son was killed. He'd gotten involved with the Knights of Ren, and when he didn’t do what they wanted, they executed him. Mailed the bullet to Leia. Shortly after that, they also murdered her husband. Leia never speaks of them, has no pictures or mementos, so the mention is uncharacteristic; it makes Rey’s mouth go dry.

“Can we not do this right now?” Rey asks, burying her face in her hands. “I’m already late.”

“This is serious. You’re his mother; you’re all he has. You need to come home on time. _Straight_ home.”

“I know…” _Softness, lips pulling, stars spinning. You’re not alone._ No, she can’t mention that. Last night didn’t happen. What matters is Luan. “You know, the other day when I dropped him off at school, he asked about his father again. I brushed it off, but he’s been asking more and more. I don’t know what to say.” When Luan was younger, he was more easily placated. Rey told him his father disappeared while away on a long trip, but that he was so wanted and loved. However, at seven, he almost demands to know; that simple explanation doesn’t stop his questions. _Why, why, why?_

“I told you not to lie to him,” Leia says. “Children find even our deepest buried secrets.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Thoughts, praise, constructive criticism? Leave a comment below or contact/follow me on Tumblr: [theaberrantwritergirl](https://theaberrantwritergirl.tumblr.com/). Thank you guys for the comments and encouragement last chapter! I have this story on a weekly rotation and a few chapters already written, but I still have some to write, so the feedback helps!
> 
> Special thank you to my first readers, [AuroraReylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraReylo/works) and [benduo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/benduo/pseuds/benduo). You guys are the best. <3


	3. summer’s unreturning track

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Alone. Her face, her words—they hide in the sidewalk cracks, in the sheets on the cold, vacant side of his bed. Her face, the pain tucked away in the lines of her forehead. But… it was like her smile, the folds in her eyes… glowed. Without a moon, didn’t fucking matter. Neither are you._  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning: Minor dub-con between Snoke/Ben but not graphic, more suggestive—not painted in a positive light. Mature-level abuse/sexual abuse.**

I live alone, I look to die alone:  
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,  
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,  
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown  
On sometime **summer’s unreturning track**.

—["From Sunset to Star Rise" by Christina Rossetti](https://interestingliterature.com/2018/09/a-short-analysis-of-christina-rossettis-from-sunset-to-star-rise/)

* * *

His mother always said the stars held stories people hid in constellations. Things they loved. Memories.  _ Secrets. _ She knew better than anyone. Glamorous in white, flowing dresses of cashmere, make-up naturally unnatural, skin flawless—on the surface. She gave speeches and talked with the poor, came home to her husband, and hugged her son when the cameras clicked. But they weren’t her stars. 

Secrets were.

Ben lights a cigarette and waits in the darkness of the trees. Red glows brightly under the cemetery lamplight as she passes through the gates. A red scarf tight around her neck. The moon is a sliver in the sky, against tradition.  _ Rey.  _ She looks right and left; stares up at the sky. Obsessed with those goddamn stars—balls of gas that cared fuck all about her.  _ Neither are you, neither are you, neither— _

He grinds his teeth, sucking back his cigarette and lighting another. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have followed her tonight or any night for the past few months. But he has to obey orders. Like mother, like son. Girls are disappearing from their Owners, cutting into profits.

Her face is make-up free and pinched. She tugs her scarf tighter and tighter, trying to hide those raised scars and failing. No lies or secrets like they have. She cries with the girls at the facility and holds their hands; she takes her son to school and kisses his cheeks—no cameras. 

Ben’s mother, however, sent him off to a boarding school at eight. Everything was about what he wore, how he held his fork, how neat his hair was.  _ Now, Benny, give them a good smile as you walk onto the porch. They just want a good smile, and they’ll leave you alone.  _

Rey isn’t like her, him, or anyone he’s met before. That was why he chose her. His secret only the stars know. 

Ben stomps his cigarette into the dirt and walks home alone.

* * *

_ Alone.  _ Her face, her words—they hide in the sidewalk cracks, in the sheets on the cold, vacant side of his bed. Her face, the pain tucked away in the lines of her forehead. But… it was like her smile, the folds in her eyes…  _ glowed. _ Without a moon, didn’t fucking matter.  _ Neither are you.  _

Ben collapses onto his couch, turns up the TV, whiskey in hand. That familiar voice cuts through, white face resolute behind his podium of metal. “The country is strong. We are united.” Supreme Leader Snoke. Savior, lord. But like his mother, Ben knows what he buries beneath crisp suits and blue ties.  _ Fingers across his back, on his throat. The tickle of breath against his ear.  _ Ben flips to the next channel. The brunt nose of a revolver wielded by a man in a yellow vest fills the screen, horns touting in the background triumphantly. Gary Cooper—Man of the West, Ben’s father’s favorite movie. A former criminal travels from his small town to hire a schoolteacher, but as these movies often go, the train is robbed. When Ben’s father was home from a shipment, usually for a few days, they’d sit on couch all day watching westerns until Ben’s mother came home and told them to get their “scruffy, nerf-herding feet” off her leather—didn’t they know they had a dinner to attend? Ben always asked what a nerf herder was, but his father would simply say, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.” 

He never did. 

Ben wakes to darkness. Car horns blaring and shouts below. No one or anything.

Hux gives him the daily morning report over the phone, explaining the policies Snoke is looking to enact and ones his Knights would be responsible for enforcing throughout the nation—and the capital, Coruscant, in particular. There have been talks of enacting child limits per woman. Too many dying, Ben guesses. The upper-classes don’t like that. 

The day starts usual enough—walking to the facility, catching the side of her face as she opens the doors—until Ben notices  _ them  _ as he’s cleaning a room.  _ His _ Knights. Snoke thinking he can’t do  _ his  _ job.

Beneath their metal masks, they stand, each posted to a door, observing and staring. Stiff. Rey shuffles her feet and tugs at her scarf more but keeps up her routine—checking on each of the women, giving out medications, counseling them, discharging another. She thinks she’s hiding her emotions, and maybe the others are fooled, but Ben isn’t. She trembled when she was chosen. Now, then—all the same. 

Ben goes outside for a cigarette, ripping off his surgical mask and baseball cap, jaw ticking. He  _ was _ doing his job, and a good fucking job too, before this shit. Face covered, hair tucked away, Rey hasn’t recognized him yet, not in the three months or so he’s been monitoring the facility. The Knights took care of Paige, a warning, and shouldn’t that have been enough? More deaths, especially of doctors, would mean riots. Riots would mean change. And change would start the cycle anew. Change has to be gradual—Snoke understands that, so what the hell is this? 

Hours later, Ben slides into a tinted SUV, immediately saying, “I was figuring it out. And now they won’t talk.”

“Diplomacy doesn’t work,” Snoke says with a smile. “They respond to fear.” His hand creeps to Ben’s thigh, slowly crawls across his jeans. 

“I had it under control. Some of the doctors here would be a great asset to us.” Ben swallows as Snoke’s hand continues to climb. “They’re  _ my _ Knights, not yours.  _ I _ command them.”

His hand hangs on his upper thigh, stroking the outline. “Is that the way we talk to each other? Have I not given you all you’ve desired?”

“You have,” Ben says, but the words are forced and sour.

“It’s been months since you started spying and you still have so little to offer. Pissing away my money in that rathole apartment on the westside. A pity. I suppose the only good thing that has come from your sabbatical is getting rid of that ridiculous mask.”

_ Sabbatical.  _ Like Ben isn’t doing a job. Does he… know about Rey? Ben’s lips part and unpart, confused, grabbing Snoke’s hand on his thigh. “I’ve given everything I have to you. To our cause. Together.” 

Snoke tilts his head slightly to the side, considering, before moving closer. His lips brush Ben’s, soft kisses that tease and coax. Coordinated, different from how Rey consumed his mouth, pushed her tongue in, and let it linger. Ben wants to slap him away, but that would mean consequences. Pain. Snoke keeps kissing him, caressing his face delicately, and Ben tries to reciprocate, but his lips twitch. 

Snoke punches him. Between his legs. Ben’s stomach twists; he gasps and coughs. 

Snoke slams his fist down again, then again, grabs and digs until Ben cries out. “You forget who you belong to. I see how you watch that girl. I told you to dispose of her first.”

“She’s… nothing.” Ben struggles for air. “I would have killed… her, but she leads the facility… it would have sent the wrong message.”

“I could rip these off, and then what would you be? What would you have to offer her?”

“You need them.”

_ “I _ only need a hole.” Snoke laughs, grabs him harder. “To feel pleasure…  _ these, _ are a privilege.” Snoke holds for a moment more, then his grip relaxes, hand withdrawing. “The mighty Kylo Ren—a child in a mask.”

Ben takes in those words, still gasping. He wants to hug himself, crushing his insides together.  _ Daddy, another nightmare. Just another nightmare. Go back to bed. Don’t go. Just another nightmare. The clicking of cameras. Go back—  _

Snoke traces cold fingers across his face calmly. “I’m afraid I’ve been too harsh with you, haven’t I?” He takes Ben into his arms, planting kisses across his cheeks and lips like he’s a child again, the anger gone from his blue eyes. “The reports you provided have been most useful in…  _ overcoming  _ this set back. The Knights are to remind them, and if it comes to that, you will join them until the Resistance is found and crushed like the roaches they are.” Snoke caresses his face again. “You are so special, my Ben. How about I show my appreciation?” With that, he unclasps Ben’s jeans and boxers, slipping them down to his boots.

Ben settles into the leather seat, spreads his legs. _Freckles. Uncoordinated kisses._ _You’re not alone. Neither are you._ How her face shined. And a darker memory, one he has tried to forget—

How it bled beneath the moonless stars. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments on the last chapter were so nice! I really appreciate the encouragement. It helps a lot. Thoughts, praise, constructive criticism? Any predictions? What do you think will happen when Ben and Rey meet again? Leave a comment below or contact/follow me on Tumblr: [theaberrantwritergirl](https://theaberrantwritergirl.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Special thank you to my first readers and brainstorming partners, [AuroraReylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraReylo/works) and [benduo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/benduo/pseuds/benduo). You are two of my favorite hoomans in the fandom. <3


	4. the holes they leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Unmoving, trancelike, Kylo stares, as if through smoke. More water. The Chancellor seizes, throws his head up and back. Rey. Like she had tried, drowning in the stars. But there is no sky, no moon, no stars—not in concrete._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning: Torture (waterboarding) and violence. Please keep checking the tags; they update with each chapter.**

And now, each night I count the stars,  
And each night I get the same number.  
And when they will not come to be counted,  
I count **the holes they leave**.

Nobody sings anymore.

—["Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note" by Amiri Baraka](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58013/preface-to-a-twenty-volume-suicide-note)

* * *

Sunlight doesn’t exist twenty feet below ground. No moon. No stars.

“Please let me speak to the Supreme Leader,” the Chancellor pleads. “This must be a misunderstanding!”

Kylo had never thought much about the stars before her. They simply existed. A constant on clear, cloudless nights, lights that welcomed him when he would sneak out at night or went drinking too late, hands in pockets. His mother told him her theories and stories, but they didn’t mean anything. 

_Bang!_ Vicrul slams his head back into the metal chair. He’s repeated the same words since he woke up in the interrogation room. _A misunderstanding! An oversight! I have a right to know what I’ve done! I know nothing!_

Cries echo off the walls; Kylo’s mask does little to muffle the sound. He wonders at it, at the thick concrete that smothers them. He’d never noticed the stars before her and now... He sucks in a mechanical breath. 

“I’m sure we can work something out,” the Chancellor says calmly. Blood runs down his head, drips onto the table. 

“You were caught making contact with the Resistance, Chancellor Egrin.” Kylo moves closer to his face. “Wouldn’t you say we are a bit… past bargaining now?”

A week ago, Kylo had the Chancellor’s house wiretapped without his knowledge, and the revelations were… interesting indeed. He’s been working for the Resistance, some sort of funneling money from the government to support their operations in the rehabilitation center. The bastards all have code names, so Kylo isn’t sure who his contacts are. 

The Knights grab him and force the Chancellor’s head back. Smother his face with a cloth. He flails, turns, but makes no sound until they dump the water. He gurgles, thrashing. The cloth drips and clings. Unmoving, trancelike, Kylo stares, as if through smoke. More water. The Chancellor seizes, throws his head up and back. _Rey._ Like she had tried, drowning in the stars. But there is no sky, no moon, no stars—not in concrete. 

“Enough.” Kylo nods his head to Vicrul on the right. 

When Kuruk removes the cloth, the Chancellor sputters and coughs up water. “I…” He struggles for air. “...have information. That’s what the Supreme Leader wants, doesn’t he?”

“So right, so perceptive,” Kylo says. 

* * *

The next time Ben sees her, she’s sitting on a bar stool with a half-drained tumbler of whiskey. Work scrubs, short brown hair wind tangled and frizzy. 

Ben hasn’t seen her for days, maybe a week—what fucking day is it? After Snoke’s visit, Kylo interrogated the Chancellor and patrolled the streets and pleasure houses. The women cowered and shrunk. _Scavenger, princess, pilot_ —what did they mean and who were they? The Chancellor said those were the only names he knew of. Apparently, he had gotten a favored prostitute pregnant, and they blackmailed him about revealing it to his wife and the public. But now he would be tried for treason. A waste on some whore. They are nothing; Rey is nothing. Holes to be fucked and filled to keep the population obedient.

But in the bar, when she throws her hair back and tugs at her scarf, Ben stares, eye twitching. He shouldn’t walk to her, but his feet don’t agree. 

“Can I buy you another drink?”

She smiles, beginning a polite refusal—until she turns her head. Her face falls. “What do _you_ want?” 

He orders a whiskey for himself and a wine for her. “You aren’t a whiskey person,” he says. “Why did you order it?”

“That’s presumptuous.” She knocks back the rest of her drink, like she’s protesting, but shudders as the liquid goes down. 

“You don’t have to lie to impress me.”

“And you don’t have to leave to hook me. I know this game, and I’m not playing it. I’m not fucking you, so fuck off. You can buy your entertainment across the street.”

“I didn’t come for entertainment.”

She scoffs; their drinks arrive. “And yet, you’re on this side of town.” She nods to his watch and jacket, both designer, gifts from Snoke. “Do you really think I would believe you living over here with those on?” 

“And you? A doctor on this side of town?”

“You know why I come here.”

Ben chuckles, sipping his drink. “And you know why I do, too.”

That makes her smile slightly, but she clears it with a shake of her head. “I used to come a lot before my mum died. When she was working, she’d stand just outside that door,” Rey points, “and wait. Always waiting. I’d watch her, want to make sure she was safe… doesn’t matter. Thank you for the drink.”

“My mother used to give speeches in this area before the End,” Ben admits, voice shaking a little. “Outreach to the lower classes. All for appearance, but… I’d see her on TV sometimes when she was here. She wasn’t around much at home. But she’s gone now, so, yeah.”

Rey’s face twists with concern. “No, I, um, I’m sorry.” She laughs, tension releasing. “Aren’t we just a right pair of sob stories?” 

“Yours is worse, though, isn’t it?” he says and looks directly into her hazel eyes, the brown swirled into the green. 

Her hand rises to her neck, the scarf. “Is this why you left?”

Ben reaches to grab it, softly rubbing the navy cotton between his thumb and index finger. “Why do you hide it?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

He grabs her wrist. “May I?”

Hesitantly, she nods, and he places her hand under one of his sleeves, running her fingertips across his raised skin. “Do you feel that? I have more.”

Mouth hanging slightly open, she asks, “Who did this to you?”

“Does it matter?”

She pulls her hand back. “I think it does. To get justice.”

“And was there justice for you?” When she shakes her head, he continues, “Justice is an illusion in this world, or maybe it always has been. Do you ever find it ironic that they call it the Beginning and we call it the End? The beginning of their justice and the end for ours.” It’s a lie to get her to trust him, but a pang rises to his chest, like betrayal. These words… feel true. Is this how he really feels? He isn’t sure, but the convicted look in Rey’s eyes makes him resolute and unregretful. 

“That wasn’t your mother this time, was it?” she says with a large smile and a little laugh. “You really are a poet… or a philosopher, perhaps?” 

He scoffs, takes a swig of his whiskey. Avoids that smile, all teeth showing, the laughter dancing in her eyes. 

Her hand rises to her neck again, unraveling her scarf, revealing a faint white line. Faded, no blood. She grasps his hand, pressing his fingertips to it. Her skin radiates heat. Smooth, healed. Not deep enough to kill her. He wonders at the scar, eyes darting from it to her face.

“Are you… can you…” he stammers, panting. “Do you wanna come back to my place?”

She smiles again, bigger, and he doesn’t look away this time. Her cheeks, the freckles that kiss her skin. He leans in, but she doesn’t. Her eyes break from his. “I, well, I can’t.”

“Busy?” he asks with a forced chuckle, like she had a month ago.

“No, it’s… it’s not just me. I have a son. He’s expecting me home. I come home too late these days. It was supposed to be a quick drink, but I’ve seemed to have lost track of the time.”

Ben swallows at the mention of him. He read her file, followed her, saw him, but refused to think of it any further. Couldn’t do it. How she’d brushed the brown hair from his eyes, her face brightening. “How old is he?”

“He just turned seven.”

“Dad out of the picture?” Ben asks, already knowing the answer to this, too, but not giving a fuck. 

“It’s complicated,” she mumbles. Her smile dies. “He’s never really had a father.”

Ben reaches up to brush the scar on her neck again, delicately gliding his index finger to her unblemished, smooth cheek. He cradles it, swallows. “Tomorrow, then?”

With her eyes searching his, hungry, she nods.

* * *

Ben stumbles to his apartment in a daze. He pours a glass of whiskey, neat, and turns on the TV. Breathes, but his heart still races. What was he thinking—inviting her here? What does he have to offer her? 

A gleam catches his eye. On the windowsill near his bed, moonlight reflecting off the glass. Shaggy, brown hair and crooked, missing front teeth. Ben knocks back the rest of his whiskey and moves to it. _Luan Palana, 2nd grade._ Ben cradles the frame, brushing his thumb across the wood. Rey didn’t get his hair cut this year; it hangs in his brown eyes. A few features belong to Rey—the cheeks, the ears. He has her smile, large and carefree. But the rest? 

_He’s never really had a father._ But Ben did—or had—and what good had it done him? Ben met Snoke when he was seven, at some bullshit gala party in an overpriced, rooftop restaurant. Milk-white, pocked skin. Like an Elizabethan-era painting Ben had seen in his history textbook earlier that day. He wasn’t anyone important then—a senator from Stewjon. Ben’s mother introduced him, and when Snoke took his hand, he bent down, eye-to-eye, the blue searching. “Such a pleasure. And how old are you, young man?” The lights, the laughter, the smoke—they swallowed and surrounded him. Ben swallowed, squeaking out, “Seven,” before tears spilled down his cheeks. He wanted to press his hands into his ears, but Snoke brushed the tears away, told him it was alright. His mother reiterated the sentiment, handing Ben to his nanny for the night, but her narrowed eyes screamed annoyance. Disappointment. 

He had always disappointed his mother. But Luan? Rey looks at him like he’s her... her sun and moon. Her _stars._ And he was forced on her. 

Ben found out about Luan two years ago, when he sought Rey out for the first time in six years. Found his kindergarten photo. Could it be? No. How could it be possible? He printed out the photo, framed it, hid it under his bed, in his quarters. Pushed those thoughts down—the back and forth of disbelief and conviction. Even if it were true, what would it change? 

In a box under his bed, Ben buries the photo with the rest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Thoughts, praise, constructive criticism? Leave a comment below or contact/follow me on Tumblr: [theaberrantwritergirl](https://theaberrantwritergirl.tumblr.com/). Please also consider reblogging the advertising post on Tumblr: [Beneath the Moonless Stars: Chapter 4](https://theaberrantwritergirl.tumblr.com/post/637434883449421824/beneath-the-moonless-stars)
> 
> In addition, thank you for being patient. This chapter was delayed due to lack of inspiration and the nagging feeling that something was missing for weeks. I'm hoping I can get back to a weekly rotation (or at the very least, a biweekly one). Your comments were lovely, and even if I am late at replying to them, please know that they help me immensely when I'm writing the next few chapters. They bring up points I may not have considered before. 
> 
> Special thank you to my alphas and betas, [AuroraReylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraReylo/works) and [benduo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/benduo/pseuds/benduo).


End file.
